The early 1900s marked the low point in 20th-century race relations between white Americans and African Americans.
Enacted between 1876 and 1965, Jim Crow laws formalized racial segregation in the Southern States, systematizing a number of economic, educational, and social disadvantages for African Americans.
Theodore Roosevelt's treatment of the Brownsville Affair, in which 167 African American soldiers were wrongfully discharged from the Army, caused the black community to turn away from the Republic president they had once supported.
Despite promises made to black voters during the election of 1912, Woodrow Wilson gave into the demands of white Southern Democrats, fired a number of black Republican politicians, and supported racial segregation.
Woodrow Wilson's policy of military segregation led to conflict, rioting, and the brutal sentencing of the all-black Twenty-Fourth U.S. Infantry Regiment.
Marcus Garvey, a prominent Jamaican, led a Back-to-Africa movement that promoted the return of the African diaspora to their ancestral lands.